DIAMOND keeps a central administration database, used for the storage of general information about the company using it. Stored information relates to projects and associated drawings, master and project libraries, authorised users together with their access rights to the various system components, devices such as plotters or graphics terminals, and pre-defined and user defined drawing standards or length and angular units.

DIAMOND is a true multi-user CAD system and as such it constantly monitors and controls multiple access to its data files. It will detect and prevent more than one user opening the same data file for modification purposes. It will synchronise access to shared data files such as libraries or reference drawings, to ensure that only valid and updated data is being operated on.

On a networked system, any modification to a shared data file will immediately become available throughout the DIAMOND network. The menus accessible on every available workstation will always be automatically modified to reflect those changes.

Users

A DIAMOND user is any person who has been authorised by the system administrator to operate the system.

Users have an assigned status level, which is utilised to restrict data access rights and operation levels. As in many other cases, DIAMOND adapts itself to the user company requirements. It can handle various drawing office practices, from the free-for-all case where every user is allowed to perform every operation, to a precise and well structured organisation that is controlled by passwords and status levels under the supervision of the system administrator.

Authorised users may have unique login scripts which will automatically set chosen user interfaces, preferred working environments and favoured sets of command synonyms. The login scripts can be activated without any need to restart the system. On networked systems, users can change to their favoured interface, on any workstation, with a single command.

Projects and drawings

A project is a collection of related drawings. Each project has, in addition to the list of drawings associated with it, a minimum status level required for access to it, an optional password, and related libraries that can be accessed only by users working on drawings from this project. Only those users with pertinent access rights to a project can access its drawings or libraries.

Projects, like drawings and libraries, are referred to by their assigned names, which means that users are not asked to become familiar with their computer system, its various data structures or its storage methods. As project names are unique, DIAMOND will not allow the creation of two projects with the same name.

DIAMOND's drawings are created and stored within a parent project, in much the same way as in a traditional drawing office filing system. DIAMOND's administration database ensures that drawing names (within the same project) remain unique.

Drawings contain geometric items and additional data associated with them. They can be referenced to each other, with users being able to scale, move, mirror or rotate each reference file independently. In addition, it is possible to select separate display options, such as layers or entity types, for each referenced drawing. A drawing can have up to 32 reference files attached to it.

Libraries

Libraries are used for the storage of data frequently used during many design and draughting tasks. Libraries incorporating

line styles, line types, text fonts, viewports, colours, menus and parameterised or standard parts are supplied.

DIAMOND users can, at any time, define new project libraries, while the system administrator can also define master ones. Up to three out of the available libraries can be simultaneously accessed. When accessed for data retrieval or specification, DIAMOND will show previews of the library contents to facilitate easy entity selections.

Some library operations, like the deletion of library items, can only be executed at the highest status level by the system administrator.